IRS Employees: We Targeted Conservative Groups on Orders from Washington

Ahead of new hearings on the IRS abuse scandal, the House Government Oversight and Reform Committee has released transcripts of depositions it has taken with IRS employees. The employees directly contradict IRS honcho Lois Lerner’s claim that the targeting was merely the work of “rogue” employees in the IRS Cincinnati office.

Q: So is it your perspective that ultimately the responsible parties for the decisions that were reported by the IG are not in the Cincinnati office? A: I don’t know how to answer that question. I mean, from an agent standpoint, we didn’t do anything wrong. We followed directions based on other people telling us what to do. Q: And you ultimately followed directions from Washington; is that correct? A: If direction had come down from Washington, yes. Q: But with respect to the particular scrutiny that was given to Tea Party applications, those directions emanated from Washington; is that right? A: I believe so.

The claim that “rogue agents” came up with the Be On the Lookout (BOLO) list never made any sense. The claim that “rogue agents” came up with the many detailed questions that conservative groups were subjected to never made any sense. The claim that “rogue agents” would come up with so much extra work for themselves, outside their normal responsibilities and outside their union contract, never made any sense. Getting unionized workers to do extra work requires the union’s buy-in. Getting bureaucrats to do extra work requires orders from their superiors. That’s how government works.

The IRS itself has blown Lerner’s story apart, saying that as many 88 employees are being looked at. The agency is still evidently trying to contain the scandal to its lower ranks, but the deposed IRS agents say they were following orders from those above them.

Q: Did anyone else ever make a request that you send any cases to Washington? A: [Different IRS employee] wanted to have two cases that she couldn’t ‑‑ Washington, D.C. wanted them, but she couldn’t find the paper. So she requested me, through an email, to find these cases for her and to send them to Washington, D.C. Q: When was this, what time frame? A: I don’t recall the time frame, maybe May of 2010.

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Q: But just to be clear, she told you the specific names of these applicants. A: Yes. Q: And she told you that Washington, D.C. had requested these two specific applications be sent to D.C. A: Yes, or parts of them.

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Q: Okay. So she asked you to send particular parts of these applications. A: Mm‑hmm. Q: And that was unusual. Did you say that? A: Yes.Q: And she indicated that Washington had requested these specific parts of these specific applications; is that right? A: Correct.

Congress has a ways to go to prove this, and it needs to stay focused on getting at the truth before jumping to any conclusions in public, but the nature of the questions the IRS asked of its targeted groups read like political opposition research — in other words, political campaign activity. Someone was digging for deep ideological, organizational and membership information on these groups that opposed Obama agenda. “Rogue agents” who are career government workers are not going to come up with questions like that on their own, but someone who bounced back and forth between the Obama campaign and his White House might. Several Obama confidants did that, including David Axelrod and Bob Bauer. Keep that in mind when Axelrod opines on the subject: He may have been involved in it.

Bryan Preston has been a leading conservative blogger and opinionator since founding his first blog in 2001. Bryan is a military veteran, worked for NASA, was a founding blogger and producer at Hot Air, was producer of the Laura Ingraham Show and, most recently before joining PJM, was Communications Director of the Republican Party of Texas.

The Axelrod angle I have suspected for some time. It's funny how he resigned right after Obama won the second election. I would also not be surprised that he might be involved in the Benghazi cover up. This guy is slick when on the news shows.

We are going to find that yes indeed the orders came from Washington, and that specifically they came from 1600 Penna. Ave NW, and even more specifically from a man who most likely had his filthy feet up on the Resolute Desk.

Testimony from the hearings into the Administration's IRS abuses shows that the IRS collected a hell-of-a-lot of information on conservatives that it had no business collecting. The question to me is whatis the Administration doing with this data? Are there now secret dossiers on American citizens simply because they have views contrary to those held by our "Progressive" ruling class? If so, what will be done with these dossiers? History has shown what "Progressives" do with secret dossiers. Just look at the Nazi death camps and the Soviet gulag.

Finding answers to this question must become a central point of the current and future Congressional investigations into the IRS scandals.

When the military makes a 'Threat Assessment' they look at an enemy's_capabilities_, not his intentions, let alone his for-public-consumptionstatements.The Red States, and the less fanatic Blues, should be gearing up to removethis threat to their political power before they are assimilated.

The buck passes by obamaba it usually starts with the true potus val/jar with lots of input from some of the rest of the Chicago mobsters like the bent axel and others. Truth is though all decisions are made by val/jar with occasional input by the mooch. Zero stays out of what he knows little about--everything.

It is a bureaucracy, MM; Everything is backed up, in triplicate, in ajournaling file system with the 'delete' function disabled; Only thehighest level personnel can 'cleanse' the files, and the absencewould be more damning than the documents; It is the coverupthat gets them.

OBAMA is America's "HITLER', pure EVIL, Chicago mafia that has beengoing on for many, many years. Only people who refuse to keep up with what is really going on in this county and burying their head in silly TV entrainment voted for this CROOK, to be President.

There will be no one "smoking gun" document that ties this directly to Obama. But there will be a lot of career IRS employees who are going to sing the song "I was just following orders." And that will lead to the near top who will take the fall for Obama.

Remember this; there were no documents that showed that Hitler actually gave the orders for the extermination of the Jews, but his desires were clearly carried out by the higher echelon of the Nazi regime who knew exactly what Hitler wanted. Hitler, while a madman, was not crazy and he didn't have transcripts of his meetings with the Grand Mufti over the "final" solution. Obama, who I consider evil, isn't crazy.

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